Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I used to go to the Saturday evening service at St. Charles when I was single - it's great! Most people that go to that service are single. You see a lot of the same faces each week.
Unfortunately St Charles has changed a lot in the last few years under the current pastor and most of those changes have not been for the better. As a result, the vast majority of the lay people who worked there left, many of the various ministries that parishioners volunteered with and made the parish special no longer exist, the music is much more uniform and those musicians who made the 6 pm mass attractive to young singles could no longer perform as in the past, and many many many families and young couples have left for St Anne's or Our Lady Queen of Peace. My family have been parishioners for almost 20 years and frankly I don't know why we haven't switched to either of those yet, though we have started attending St Anne's a few times. The 6 pm mass still attracts a decent amount of young people but that no longer has anything to do with St Charles as a community and everything to do with its location. St Charles is now just like every bland, uninspiring, non descript Catholic church out there and a shell of the great parish it once was. Very sad.
I love the shallowness of this reply. You don't get to perform your acoustic guitar St. Louis Jesuits "Bread of Life" ditties anymore. Instead Fr. Planty has installed liturgically pure compositions, namely Gregorian chant and organ music. Now you don't fit in.
Or, you want to join your "VOICE" friends to support some affordable housing project. You ask for help, and Father rightfully asks what on Earth housing finance has to do with salvation!? Again, you don't fit in.
Or you want to teach in the religious education program, but you married a divorced Protestant. Well, of COURSE Father told you that you can't appear before the children. Yet again, you don't fit in.
St. Charles was a haven of secularism before Father became pastor. There was no spiritual and theological core. To purify the Parish, some dirt and mud needed to be washed away. PP, you're some of that mud.